


There and Back Again

by Medie



Category: Star Trek
Genre: Background Femslash, Comment Fic, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-07
Updated: 2011-01-07
Packaged: 2017-10-14 13:19:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/149611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Medie/pseuds/Medie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is not the first time the bond between a Medusan and an attendant, a companion, has been broken by death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There and Back Again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cosmic_llin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmic_llin/gifts).



The Medusans understand. This is not a new situation for them.

This is not the first time the bond between a Medusan and an attendant, a companion, has been broken by death. They understand that, in the aftermath of the Ambassador's death, not much else can be done. Leaving is her only refuge. She's bonded with one of theirs, so deeply she lost track of the separation between their thoughts and her own. There can be no replacement found among their own ranks. To allow another into that place feels like a betrayal and she feels faint at the very consideration.

They would never ask it of her, never think of asking, and she's grateful. In the early days, she's too vulnerable, too raw, stumbling through each day and each project. Sensory overload. The demand of a Medusan bond had required an openness she would have never allowed at any other time. The vulnerability it invited was dangerous.

Her connection to her sensor net becomes intermittent, the turmoil of her brain chemistry rendering it nearly useless.

She discards it for a time in favour of the familiar territory that is her estate. Kollos had constructed it for her needs, not needing any such accommodations for himself, as was common among the Medusans. She moves easily about it with little concern for obstacles.

It's there she regains her equilibrium, schooling her mind to the control she'd learned on Vulcan, and it's there she says goodbye. Goodbye to Kollos, the Medusan homeworld, and the Medusans themselves.

"I'll miss this place," she tells Kollos, speaking aloud to remind herself of his absence. It's a tricky thing to lose someone so close, whose thoughts had so entangled with her own that some remnants of him echoes within her still, and she needs the concrete reminder. She can't be sure, within the privacy of her own mind, that—should she ask the question—some fragment of him wouldn't answer.

"I'll miss you," she adds, more quietly.

She turns from the window and the breeze off the Medusan sea. It's the last time she'll feel its bracing edge against her body and the last time she'll smell the cinnamon-like scent carried to her from its waves.

Allowing herself the pain of the multiple losses, she can face the necessary farewells to come. She will miss this world and its people. Saying goodbye to them will be no easier than to this place.

They come in small groups; thei- _her_ coworkers, Medusan and attendant alike. Miranda moves gracefully from one to the next, accepting their condolences, nodding through each comment, feeling the brush of each Medusan's thought in counterpoint to their attendant's words. Each one is a wound, an ache, and she makes it through by sheer force of will.

It's almost a comfort to sense the cacophony of a Starfleet ship's crew approach. It is a relief, but she sweeps the thought and its accompanying emotions behind the wall of her mental shielding, somewhere no self-respecting Medusan will reach.

Once, she hated the chaos of human thought. Now, she welcomes the whisper of the transporter beam over her skin that will return her to it. If only for the fact that among the Starfleet crew, she isn't alone. The constant hum of their thoughts in the background will be--it will be a refuge.

Allowing herself to be beamed from her adopted home, Miranda remembers the crew that had brought her to the Medusans and permits a tiny smile.

She suspects they'd be relieved to know her thoughts even as they misinterpreted them.

Miranda materializes with a laugh. It'll be interesting to be misunderstood again. Medusans never make such mistakes and neither do those with whom their thoughts intertwine. It's an odd thing to miss and Kollos had teased her incessantly for it, but she missed it just the same.

Looks forward to it now.

"Dr. Jones."

She hears the soft voice, familiar, like velvet on her skin and freezes. It's been years, so many, since she's heard it that she can't quite trust her ears.

"Miranda."

She steps down from the transporter pad. Hears the a footfall as familiar as the voice. "One. How are you—"

"This is my ship."

Number One's hand closes around hers. A sense of her slips through Miranda's mind. Cool control overlaying a nature that's anything but.

Miranda breathes in and smiles. _Wonderful_.


End file.
